9/11 - The story of our lives

Tuesday

The following commentary was part of a special section marking the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the country and is being republished on the 17th anniversary of 9/11.

There must have been other news stories that day.

Tuesday was production day for several of our weekly newspapers and we started off that morning like so many before — just planning to put this week's paper out. But the events that occurred before our eyes on the TV screen behind my newsroom cubicle erased those headlines before we could ever write them.

It was a gorgeous day and I was at work before 9 a.m. after dropping off my then 2-1/2-year-old son at a family daycare not far from the office. I was sitting at my desk when the editor-in-chief came running up the stairs to the newsroom and yelled “turn on the TV! A plane just hit the World Trade Center.”

On the screen in front of us was live footage of the billowing smoke out of the north tower. By the time the second airliner made its deadly turn toward the south tower, several of my colleagues had arrived in the newsroom and gathered around the TV with us.

“That's another plane,” I heard one of our photographers say as he pointed to the TV.

I couldn't fathom that; thinking instead to myself it must be footage of the first plane, some sort of instant replay caught on camera. Of course the moment I thought that, I realized there couldn't have been any footage of the first plane striking the World Trade Center. It was completely unexpected, a horrifying surprise attack just as the terrorists wanted.

Soon there was news about the Pentagon being hit and still another plane over Pennsylvania that had been hijacked. It was suddenly and horrifyingly clear — we were under attack.

What was the next target? My mind was racing and there was a strong, protective urge I felt to leave, to pick up my son and go home. But I couldn't go. I couldn't leave the newsroom and that TV screen projecting those awful images.

Instead I called my parents in Pennsylvania to check on them and I began writing an editorial — far different from the one I had planned for my opinion page that week — in my head.

By then so many of my colleagues surrounded my cubicle all of them staring at the TV in shocked disbelief, that I couldn't think clearly and I asked the editor-in-chief if I could use his office to type up an editorial we could all use that week. I had to get what was in my heart and my head on paper. I knew that the story was just beginning to unfold; that more painful, heart-breaking stories would have to be told in the days, weeks and indeed years ahead.

Reading that editorial nearly 10 years later brought me back in an instant, and jarred me emotionally. So too, did reading the local stories our reporters wrote for this anniversary section and the powerful 9/11 memories you, our readers, have shared with us.

The days that followed Sept. 11 are sort of a blur. I, like millions of Americans, spent much of them in front of the TV, at work and in my living room, listening to other members of the media telling the big story and the hundreds of little stories that grew like ripples on a pond as the days passed.

I cried with Peter Jennings as he followed a family searching for their father, who owned a restaurant at the World Trade Center, and saw them amazingly reunited amid the chaos and destruction.

And I cried again days later listening to a Kingston, Mass. mother tell me about her eldest son, Bill, who worked for an investment brokerage in the south tower. I didn't know him personally but through her words felt a strong connection to him. We were the same age. He too, was a red head. And he had a daughter a little bit younger than my son, who would never get to know her daddy.

The story of that day would be followed by so many others we would tell — all rooted in Sept. 11. Stories of heroism and patriotism; stories of men and women leaving their families and homes for Iraq and Afghanistan; stories of yellow ribbons and care packages for the troops; stories of those who returned home injured and those killed in action who weren't coming home at all.

Ten years after 9/11 we are changed, individually and collectively. We know the story; we're living it and retelling it in our everyday lives. All the terrible details we were struggling to understand that beautiful September morning in 2001 have unfolded before us during this painful decade. Ten years isn't long enough for healing. We are still wounded and scarred, but in recounting the events and retelling the stories we honor all we have lost.

Alice Coyle is the social media specialist with Wicked Local and GateHouse Media New England. She can be reached at acoyle@wickedlocal.com.